One of you ridiculed girls that would be so stupid as to require a husband. That's telling. What's more telling is that, unless I missed something, no one else on this forum had a counter argument to that. So you are pretty uniformly against a principal of two parent families. That is Atheist.

Well, that's right. You have in your mind that unwed pregnant girls is bad, therefore a small increase in them indicates badness. Your definition is circular, and doesn't take into account why they are not married.

You seem to want the unwed pregnant girls to marry someone that they don't want to marry, or can't.

You also mis-read the stupidity comment. It is stupid for a girl to marry her rapist, or abusive nutter. Yet, the Bible requires that. It's nasty to make arranged marriages, yet the Bible condones it. Not only do you have to show causality that a lack of prayer causes unwed teen preggers, you have to show that unwed pregnant girls is worse than what was happening before. You don't even bother to demonstrate that.

During that period, Americans were insanely racist, and hunting for reds under the beds, bombing the shit out of Vietnam and Korea, and spraying DDT all over the place, and repressing women. You appear to be from the tribe that worships the ideal past.

You are a circular kind of guy.

You just labelled our attitudes as "atheist", so I'm going to label you a "theist", who typically thinks that things were way better in the past.

Why not just present a graph to us that shows pre '63 as GOOD, and post '63 as BAD. If it's just you who defines what is good and bad, then you have the right to do that.

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When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be bleedn obvious.

keeta

One of you ridiculed girls that would be so stupid as to require a husband. That's telling. What's more telling is that, unless I missed something, no one else on this forum had a counter argument to that. So you are pretty uniformly against a principal of two parent families. That is Atheist.

i'm one of those girls who requires a husband...someone has to kill my spiders, chop my wood, and pay for these two kids that are both his...believe it or not...we've been together for 21 years...not one of them spent believing in any form of god. we have good kids, pay our taxes, have a couple puppies, and do what we can to help others in need. so tell me again how stupid i am for raising my kids in a two parent family again...hard to concentrate on what point you're trying to make when my toes are being nibbled on..

Add H, you just got me to thinking. I don't like that. Don't do it again. (You added that great graph as I typed this. I'm pretty sure Wayne thinks the righthand side should go straight up for several miles. And of course the left side should average zero.)

Anyway, Wayne, and people like him (yes, there are more than one) seem to have a love affair with cause and effect. Very simple cause and effect. They see a symptom (effect) and imbue it with a cause. A single cause that explains everything. In one fell swoop. So clearly that everyone should see it. Even the blind.

In Wayne's case, the issue of increasing crime and his obvious cause, the removal of prayer from schools in 1962, meets his every criteria immediately. Since he has only one criterion. That he got to choose himself. For no other reason than it was convenient for his central thesis. Godless heathens are destroying the country.

If there were laws against not thinking, Wayne would be a felon. And the case against him in court would be water tight. He had motive. He had opportunity. And he had a wild hair up his ass. BOOM! Guilty.

But it is not a crime to voluntarily limit ones intellectual efforts. It is not a crime to simplify beyond all usefulness. It is not a crime to conjure up culprits for your own convenience. At least as long as you aren't actually shooting them. So the harm that is done is mostly to the self. Wayne's intellectual dishonesty and feeble reasoning harms him the most. At least in the short run. In the long run, the thousands, or perhaps millions, who seek simplicity for the sake of their own self-righteousness, and their need to pee on others, eventually starts dragging down the very society whose ills they have so carefully but wrongly defined. And as much as such folks would deny it, they cause far more harm to the fabric of society through their words than the thing that they protest.

A world so simple that non-thinking people could figure out how to fix it is not available. Denying complexity for the sake of ones argument merely separates a person apart from the real world. That isn't much to be proud of.

There is a dynamic whereby I'm a little outnumbered. I don't have the time right now to satisfy each of you with answers to all your posts, but i am grateful for the questions.

No, you are a lot outnumbered, and it is understandable that you would feel a bit overwhelmed with questions, but you are being particularly elusive in not responding to the vast majority of them. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that you keep coming back spouting exactly the same rhetoric that you did in the beginning.

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I bring in the information from people who have influenced my thinking that are scholars. In a way, it makes me feel better about how I'm treated because you just say they are all liars and that what I've come to expect. I'm not complaining, I like even the negative attention, but somewhere along the line there is possibility that one of you is going to realise that supernatural experiences are not proof of someone lying, nor is it proof that they are crazy, which are both doctines of the Atheist religion that insulates you all from every point that I've tried to make..

A TV preacher saying there was an operator on the line of a direct-dialed call is not being truthful. You have not responded to my posts on this point, but you have repeatedly cited the phone booth story as proof of god's existence. How do you explain the operator?

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I do appreciate you taking the time to read and comment, but I'll not respond to your flaming aggression. That's sick puppy material right there."

You are very quick to judge people around here, but let's examine the crux of your position:

You have repeatedly stated that god is so unhappy that atheists had sanctioned prayer/religion removed from schools in 1962 that he is either causing or allowing madmen to shoot up schools (and theaters) and kill scores of children to demonstrate his unhappiness.

Screwtape has shown you that the majority of lawsuits resulting in the removal of sanctioned religious dogma from public schools were brought by theists.

Willie has shown you that the charts you present do not reflect the facts. The crime rate today is roughly the same as it was in '62, and trending downward.

I have shown you that school massacres have occurred before 1962, including the deadliest one in U.S. history. I have also pointed out that recent massacres have taken place in schools where god/prayer/dogma were readily allowed.

Your very premise has been proven to be factually untrue, yet you continuously come back repeating the same flawed nonsense. So let's acknowledge the real sick puppy stuff:

You want children to die! You're all for anything that serves to support your conclusions, which means you not only believe god should kill as many kids as it takes to get prayer back in schools, but that he deserves high praise and worship for doing so!

Who's the sick puppy now?

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So you are pretty uniformly against a principal of two parent families. That is Atheist.

Wayne, you are an idiot if you actually believe that. Atheists don't believe in any gods. That's it. It is not a religion. There is no doctrine. There is no system of beliefs.

The one thing atheists have in common is that, at some point, we all have suspended credulity long enough to realize that this reality operates exactly the way it ought to if there were no gods.

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Providing rednecks with sunblock since 1996.

I once met a man who claimed to be a genius, then boasted that he was a member of "Mesa".

I believe David Barton's charts, only one of five or six were ever actually posted here but I trust most of you were able to pull up the PDF.

I only posted the one because I didn't realize at the time that there were more. It takes quite a bit of time to research and address just one. I think that's one of the reasons that guys like Barton get away with so much. It takes significant time and effort to reveal the deception, but it only takes a moment to be deceived. Especially if he's telling you what you want to hear.

I'd like to address all of the charts. I think it's important to not let such harmful deception stand unchallenged. But because it takes so much time and I have a life outside of this forum, I can't promise it.

David Barton has made some mistakes, but these charts show the sources.

There are at least two ways to lie without making false statements. One is by selectively leaving out information such that what remains presents a false image. Another is by intentionally presenting information in such a way that others are led to draw make false assumptions and draw false conclusions on their own. Barton uses both of these tricks. Intentionally conveying false information is lying, regardless of the the method. In a way, it's two lies in one. The first being the false information that is conveyed, the second being the pretense of not lying.

One of you ridiculed girls that would be so stupid as to require a husband. That's telling. What's more telling is that, unless I missed something, no one else on this forum had a counter argument to that.

Not true, Wayne. I suggest re-reading his post without your atheists-are-evil filter. You saw what you wanted to see, not what was actually said.

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So you are pretty uniformly against a principal of two parent families. That is Atheist.

No, Wayne, that is a straw-man version of atheists. An effigy that you can burn without feeling guilty about it.

Atheists divorce no more often than non-atheists. Some of us here are married with children. I've been married 23 years. I have no previous marriages. I have never once cheated on my wife. I've never hired a rent-a-boy, beaten a child, embezzled money, insider-traded, defrauded, murdered, raped, mugged, or assaulted anyone. I have never been arrested. I have never had a speeding ticket. My most serious legal offense was driving with an expired inspection sticker and lapsed insurance. I have a teenage daughter. She's not pregnant, is not addicted to anything, and has never had an abortion. I was raised Pentecostal. My dad was a preacher, but he did other kinds of work at times. I am not outgoing, but I am generally pretty nice to people. I have a steady job (13 years and counting). I get along well with my co-workers. I drink very little alcohol and I don't do any recreational drugs. I have a strong aversion to lying, but I still do sometimes. I have a strong sense of right and wrong. Mostly I do what's right, but I do sometimes slip up and do wrong. My conscience kicks my ass when I do. I shoplifted a few times when I was a teenager. I very much regret it. I have inherited a predisposition for heart failure from my dad's side of the family, so I probably won't live to a ripe old age. That sucks, because I really love life.

The point of all that, Wayne, is that atheists are people, with all the variety and complexity that entails. Not one dimensional. Not a monoculture. Just as with Christians, atheists can be anything from mean criminal scumbags to the kindest most honest people you could meet. Most are somewhere in between, and maybe a little of both.

David Barton has made some mistakes, but these charts show the sources. Now, for someone that takes the data at face value the results support the reality that outlawing Judeo Christian values from the public starting at or around "63 did enormous harm.

Wayne, can you spell it out for me please - how exactly do you equate your original (and, from the above, continuing) assertion of "did enormous harm" to "unwed pregnancies rose while there was an overall Decrease in teen pregnancies"? I haven't seen the graph showing the dramatic and continual escalations in crime statistics that to most people would constitute "enormous harm". So spell it out for us, please. What EXACTLY is the "enormous harm" that began in 1963? And where EXACTLY is the evidence for it? Because it's been demonstrated quite clearly that your sources simply do NOT demonstrate any such thing.

….the moment you show me a graph that proves causation between the two factors, then yes - I will change my view.

I mean, golly Wayne! You've got a chance here to prove an atheist wrong! A chance to get them to agree that removing prayer in schools was a terrible bad thing! ALL you have to do is show the evidence for your argument.

Remember - CAUSAL. Correlation would be irrelevant, since there would ALSO be correlation (as I said) between the Russians decommissioning their Cuban missiles in 1962, and whatever you claim happened after…. So I'll stress it again - please ensure that whatever graph you point us to makes clear that there was a CAUSAL relationship.

Which is, after all, the whole point of your argument - that the one led directly to the other. If you can't prove that, then your argument has no foundation and is nothing more than your interpretation .

Prayer stopped in (a handful of) schools in 1963. And as Willie has shown, when that happened the number of teen pregnancies started to go DOWN. In other words, without prayer in school, people get pregnant less when they were in their teens. Now personally, I see that as a great general result - I can't see why Wayne wants to bring prayer BACK into school and see the incidence of teen pregnancies RISE.

Ah - it's not teen pregnancies that Wayne is worried about - its unmarried teen pregnancies. Okay, fair enough - but lets all remember to call it just what it is.

But here's the thought I had. It takes time to get married. So what Wayne is asserting is that IMMEDIATELY prayer stopped, there was an instant and dramatic effect. Starting from day one of no-prayer, teens immediately turned off from the idea of marriage.

These are people, remember, who for the last ten or more years had had daily prayers in school. Personally, I wonder what use prayer was if the effects are so swiftly reversed. And I wonder why, in the years leading UP to 1963, we didn't see a huge upswing in unmarried pregnancies every summer, when those poor children were not having their daily prayers because the schools were shut. Heck, what about the weekends? If the effects of prayer vanish so quickly, Wayne should surely be advocating school attendance 365 days a year!

His claim is that something you do pretty much every day for years and years will have no lasting effect on you as soon as you stop doing it. Frankly, that's pretty ludicrous if you look on it as something that happens within the individual, and I would be interested to hear of studies of ANY message that can so swiftly vanish from one's mind after so many years of reinforcement. Seems Wayne is saying prayer is a pretty fragile thing for the individual, with no lasting effects.

But maybe that isn't his point? Maybe the point is that the prayers those boys and girls had been making every day for a decade or more WOULD have continued to have an effect....but because his god had a hisst fit when the prayers were stopped, he immediately removed the "protection" it offered from all those children. Removed his grace from them.

I think that is, in fact, Wayne's point. But lets break that down.

None of those teens would have had ANY control over whether prayers were said in their schools. This is '63, remember, so voting age would be minimum 18, and in many cases 21. So - if unwed pregnancy IS a bad thing - Wayne's god was punishing those kids for decisions made by other people, regardless of whether the kids approved of the decision or not.

Frankly, if that is, as I suspect, what Wayne is saying, then I struggle to see how he can in any way claim that god is a "good" one, if that god deliberately chooses to ensure that bad things happen to innocents because of the actions of others.......well, I'd need a WHOLE lot of explanation as to why that god could be labelled "good".

Im on page 12 and this is painful. Extremely painful.I had a premonition once, Yahweh appeared to me, not only with his back regions, face to face. Then he told me he didnt exist and then he disappeared, never to return. That was 12 years ago.

Wayne, and people like him (yes, there are more than one) seem to have a love affair with cause and effect. Very simple cause and effect. They see a symptom (effect) and imbue it with a cause. A single cause that explains everything. In one fell swoop. So clearly that everyone should see it. Even the blind.

It's not just Wayne. It's everyone. It is how the brain has evolved. And even if you have had some rigorous training, it is difficult to get around. Some time ago I read a book called The Invisible Gorilla. I have a review of it around here somewhere.[1] It talks about 6 mental illusions our brains make. One of them is the illusion of causality and narrative. When things happen in a consecutive order (a narrative), we tend to imagine a causal link. This is the source of untold superstition and bad science. Ex:

While watching a Yankee game where they were losing, I turned my hat backward. Immediately after, Texiera hit the game winning home run. My hat being turned backward must have caused it.

One time, my wife and I had champaign. Shortly after, we learned she was pregnant. We've sworn off champaign ever since.

Kids get vaccinations around 1 1/2 -2 years old, autism becomes diagnosable around the same age. Some parents insist the vaccines cause autism.

It is a great book. I recommend everyone read it. Including Wayne.

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So you are pretty uniformly against a principal of two parent families. That is Atheist.

21% of atheists have been divorced21% of Catholics and Lutherans have been divorced24% of Mormons have been divorced25% of mainstream Protestants have been divorced29% of Baptists have been divorced24% of nondenominational, independent Protestants have been divorced

It's funny, Wayne. Every time you go shooting off your big, fat mouth, one of us shows you how horribly wrong you are. A rational person with any humility or sense of self awareness would re-evaluate his postion and moderate himself.

Heck, look at the biggest big-mouth in the country - Jets head coach, Rex Ryan. Three years ago he couldn't help but blather on about how awesome his team was and how they were definitely, without a doubt, going to win the superbowl, no matter what. Now, after two horrid, pathetic, loser seasons, the man has learned his lesson. No more stupid boasting. No more idiotic proclaimations. No more Rex Ryan shooting off his big, fat mouth. Finally.

Meanwhile,you have been humilitated in ways more thorough than Rex and still you continue to shoot off your big, fat mouth. You are not even as aware as Rex Ryan. An obvious pattern is emerging. Why wait two years to learn your lesson, Wayne?

I only posted the one because I didn't realize at the time that there were more. It takes quite a bit of time to research and address just one. I think that's one of the reasons that guys like Barton get away with so much. It takes significant time and effort to reveal the deception, but it only takes a moment to be deceived. Especially if he's telling you what you want to hear.

I'd like to address all of the charts. I think it's important to not let such harmful deception stand unchallenged. But because it takes so much time and I have a life outside of this forum, I can't promise it.

There is a lot of data there, and for you a lot of dismissing to do, I don't require you to answer every iota but The man David Barton (faulty as a man is for being a man) has compiled tons of this stuff and probably a little bit more than you're going to want to throw yourself at.

You like and encourage unwed motherhood, then that's what you get, unwed mothers and an overwhelmed welfare system. That's good huh? I can admire Keeta for holding up a Christian standard in her behavior as an Atheist. The benefits of moral living work for believers and non belivers alike.

Take a good hard look at those charts. Aren't you sorry I finally came up with them now?

« Last Edit: January 18, 2013, 12:06:40 PM by WayneHarropson »

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21% of atheists have been divorced21% of Catholics and Lutherans have been divorced24% of Mormons have been divorced25% of mainstream Protestants have been divorced29% of Baptists have been divorced24% of nondenominational, independent Protestants have been divorced

I'm not going to do all the work willie might to counteract this group of statistics except to ask if the coorelations are adjusted for the likelyhood that the group getting married in the first place. It that relationship was equal between atheists and Catholics, would they still be at 21% for Atheists. That would be interesting. In other words Catholic's faith requires marriage, compelling them at a higher rate to get married rather thatn cohabitate, whereas Atheists, not being required to marry marry at a lower frequency whereby the few that do marry seem to have the same commitment as the many Catholics that marry. Good for them.

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The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say. F. Scott Fitzgerald I write because I've been given something to say.*** SEARCH FOR PROOF OF PSYCHOSIS HERE***> http://tinyurl.com/WaynesEpisodesHave Wayne Committed, Win a Prize! (V

21% of atheists have been divorced21% of Catholics and Lutherans have been divorced24% of Mormons have been divorced25% of mainstream Protestants have been divorced29% of Baptists have been divorced24% of nondenominational, independent Protestants have been divorced

I'm not going to do all the work willie might to counteract this group of statistics except to ask if the coorelations are adjusted for the likelyhood that the group getting married in the first place. It that relationship was equal between atheists and Catholics, would they still be at 21% for Atheists. That would be interesting. In other words Catholic's faith requires marriage, compelling them at a higher rate to get married rather thatn cohabitate, whereas Atheists, not being required to marry marry at a lower frequency whereby the few that do marry seem to have the same commitment as the many Catholics that marry. Good for them.

21% of atheists have been divorced21% of Catholics and Lutherans have been divorced24% of Mormons have been divorced25% of mainstream Protestants have been divorced29% of Baptists have been divorced24% of nondenominational, independent Protestants have been divorced

I'm not going to do all the work willie might to counteract this group of statistics except to ask if the coorelations are adjusted for the likelyhood that the group getting married in the first place. It that relationship was equal between atheists and Catholics, would they still be at 21% for Atheists. That would be interesting. In other words Catholic's faith requires marriage, compelling them at a higher rate to get married rather thatn cohabitate, whereas Atheists, not being required to marry marry at a lower frequency whereby the few that do marry seem to have the same commitment as the many Catholics that marry. Good for them.

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say. F. Scott Fitzgerald I write because I've been given something to say.*** SEARCH FOR PROOF OF PSYCHOSIS HERE***> http://tinyurl.com/WaynesEpisodesHave Wayne Committed, Win a Prize! (V

I've brought this up twice already, Wayne, with no response...In reading some of your earlier posts, where you talk about your family, you refer to someone sounding like "one of my ex-wives", and also refer to your current wife, which would make this at least your third marriage. Plus, your daughter appears to have spent considerable time as some sort of addict, and estranged from you (though I am very glad to hear she is clean now).

For the record, I am married, with three adult kids. Our 28th anniversary is coming up next week.

My daughter (middle child) also atheist, got married a little over a year ago (no children yet). Her husband is also atheist, brought up by atheists (who have been together since they were 15, married for 29 years now). All our children are doing well, never involved in drugs or had any brush-ins with the law...

No matter how you want to slice it, the average atheist out there lives a life superficially identical to that of the average Christian. Minus the praying and churchgoing. We don't have morals which are completely at odds with that of the believer.

I used to know this one devoutly born-again woman who was completely baffled by the fact that I was not a Christian. She couldn't understand it...."But you're a good person", she would say. "You have to be Christian". I don't think I'm the only one who has had this sort of response.

Yes or no? Are you going to respond to our many counterarguments to your charts that showed skyrocketing crime after 1963 or whatever. That were from 1989. That have since had over 20 years of statistics added that show crime dropping back down to about where they were in 1963. Are you going to tell us why crime would drop even though mandatory prayer has not been reinstituted in those five states and forced on the other 45, or are you just going to keep ignoring the question.

Wayne, I have been in 2 long-term relationships, 1 for 26 years and 1 for 10 years. At no time in either relationship was Christianity involved in any way whatsoever -- In fact, My daughter got to see the fruits of a Christian classmate in grade 5 when a deluded "friend" called her a "devil child" for not believing.

Suffice to say that it's insufferably insulting to hear you equate 2-person partnerships with "Christian" values. Having more than 1 person in a household allows for companionship and brainstorming and lightens the load for all parties, and has nothing to do with the worship of a mythological or mythologized magic dead guy on a stick.

Take a look at the word universe. Uni(one)-verse. It still doesn't hold any weight. I've just heard Christians bring this up in an attempt to prove something..........

Hi Emile, I was being a bit simple in pointing out the science word in omniscient. I wasn't intending to be transindental about anything, just that unlike man who is capable of knowing and discovering stuff, God knows everything and is completely incapable of discovering anything since he knows it all already. Omniscience. He showed it to me by having me write a story in 1989. That' how this whole thing got started. If you are just joining you might like to take a look. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/31276689/Wayne%27s%20Dark%20Knight%20Tragedy%20Premonition.pdf

Thanks for reading. Forgive me but spell check took a leave of absence.

« Last Edit: January 18, 2013, 12:22:35 PM by WayneHarropson »

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Yes or no? Are you going to respond to our many counterarguments to your charts that showed skyrocketing crime after 1963 or whatever. That were from 1989. That have since had over 20 years of statistics added that show crime dropping back down to about where they were in 1963. Are you going to tell us why crime would drop even though mandatory prayer has not been reinstituted in those five states and forced on the other 45, or are you just going to keep ignoring the question.

Yes or no?

Are you going to continue to ignore my stressing that prayer in schools was only my illustrative example of all the initiatives? Prayer is part of the whole thing and I think you need to read the first couple of paragraphes of my Why God Let Those Kids Die article to reorient yourself to my actual assertion. I'm not aruing science-of-man I'm aruing the omniscience of God that has a tendency to over rule man's limitations.

« Last Edit: January 18, 2013, 12:30:00 PM by WayneHarropson »

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The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say. F. Scott Fitzgerald I write because I've been given something to say.*** SEARCH FOR PROOF OF PSYCHOSIS HERE***> http://tinyurl.com/WaynesEpisodesHave Wayne Committed, Win a Prize! (V